There are reasons to remake Poltergeist, but this remake doesn’t use them

Posted on May 27, 2015 by reelentropy

With modern, high-resolution TVs, your little girl can interact with even more creepy ghost hands! Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Poltergeist is a successful update that incorporates modern technology, background and tropes into an old movie, but you still have to wonder, “why?”

The remake follows the Bowens, who move into a new house that’s a step down for them due to father Eric (Sam Rockwell) being out of work. However, they got a great deal on it, as the neighborhood was mostly forclosed on in the housing crisis. Unfortunately, Indian burial ground shenanigans that mysteriously don’t affect the rest of the neighborhood kick in immediately, climaxing in young daughter Madison’s (Kennedi Clements) abduction into her closet. The signature tree and clown scares move to the opening haunting sequence and there are some adjustments to make the fracturing family subtext more obvious, but it mostly goes through the motions of the 1982 original.

It’s by no means a shot-for-shot remake. Modern effects are used to explore the netherworld in depth, where it was all offscreen in the original. Benevolent old psychic lady Tangia Barrons becomes Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris), an Irish ghost hunting TV star with black battle scars and grizzly, smoldering sex appeal. The daughter who spends all her time on the phone, Kendra (Saxon Sharbino), now spends all her time on her smartphone. It’s clever. It really brings the story into a 2015 setting.

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Tomorrowland gets A for ambition, C- for execution

Posted on May 27, 2015 by reelentropy

While many trailers have focused on George Clooney, even at the expense of co-star Britt Robertson, almost none tease Hugh Laurie. He’s a bit more popular than that, I think. Photos courtesy Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios.

Tomorrowland is a movie you want to like because it tries new things, an all-too-rare venture in Hollywood, but it doesn’t quite put them all together.

After a much too long layover in 1964, the plot starts with genius miscreant Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) finding a mysterious pin that transports her to a pocket dimension called Tomorrowland. After discovering a world still excited for new technology, Newton is desperate to return, and starts on a journey to do so with the help of Tomorrowland’s android recruiter, Athena (Raffey Cassidy), and now exiled golden son Frank Walker (George Clooney, Thomas Robinson in the 1964 scenes).

The movie’s got some pretty interesting storytelling concepts going on. It starts with a double narration — first from Walker talking about an apocalyptic future decided by greed, politics and willful ignorance, despite being raised in the ’60s when “The Future” was something out of The Jetsons. He’s interrupted by Newton, arguing for that limitless future, despite being raised in modern times when “The Future” always has something wrong with it. It’s an interesting dynamic that’s sadly dropped as Athena takes a more prominent role.

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A less chaotic state: 1982’s Poltergeist

Posted on May 21, 2015 by reelentropy

Photo courtesy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

The original Poltergeist is kind of dull. It’s not overtly scary by today’s standards, until the end at least. However, the Steven Spielberg written, produced and possibly directed film has a strong family focus. Where a lot of recent horror movies had been about a group of shitty teenagers in an obviously haunted house, Poltergeist moved to an average suburban home and plagued a splintering but otherwise normal family.

The Freelings, father Steven (Craig T. Nelson), mother Diane (JoBeth Williams), teenage daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne) and elementary-aged son Robbie (Oliver Robins) and daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) live quietly in the first homes in the suburb Steven helped build. They don’t talk or listen to each other, and the early scenes go out of their way to show the family’s disconnect and general careless attitude toward each other. All that changes when Carol Anne literally vanishes into the TV. The Freelings begin to live in fear as they must share their home with an infestation of paranormal beings, and call in all manner of investigators to cleanse the house and return their daughter to the plane of the living.

It was scary because it attacked viewers at home, where they hadn’t been before, raising questions about who your children are really listening to on TV and whether or not you’re really safe in your own home and legitimizing the idea that there really is a monster in your closet and/or under the bed.  It became one of the most widely recognized scary movies of all time, even though it’s not that scary.

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Maggie unique, too slow

Posted on May 20, 2015 by reelentropy

One thing the film does do well is it lays the body horror on thick. In one scene, Maggie must dig giant maggots out of her bite wound. Photo courtesy Roadside Attractions.

Maggie has a refreshing enough premise to carry the movie regardless, but it is a slow and disappointing movie.

In a world recovering from a zombie apocalypse, Maggie Vogel (Abigail Breslin) has been bitten and goes to the city to die alone. Her father, Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger), retrieves her from the hospital in order to spend as much remaining time with her as possible — the virus has a six-to-eight week incubation period in this film. But this is a wold riddled with zombies kept by their families too long as much as it is by the initial apocalypse, and Wade Vogel faces a choice he is never prepared to make — throw his daughter into a reportedly barbarous quarantine or kill her before she turns, an event he can’t precisely track.

Maggie’s strength is its deconstructive premise. There are plenty of zombie movies in which the enemy is a seething mass of comfortably irredeemable corpses, but in this one, they’re Wade Vogel’s next door neighbors. They’re his daughter, on an infection timeline such that he can’t be sure whether she’s more person or more ghoul at any given point.

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Madding crowd here referring to those Marvel maniacs this released against

Posted on May 20, 2015 by reelentropy

This movie could just as well be about how stupid sheep are. Photos courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Far from the Madding Crowd is one of those movies that makes me uncomfortable being born a man. I just want them to stop hitting on her. It’s a “Leave Bathsheba alone! Leave her alone!” type situation.

The movie follows Bathsheba Everdene (the scintillating Carey Mulligan) as she is proposed to by every man that lays eyes on her. She first meets Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), an affluent shepherd. While Everdene worked for him when he first proposed, he works for her most of the movie after she inherits a farm from her uncle and he loses his flock to an inexperienced sheep dog who, in a distressing scene, drives the whole lot over a cliff. She is then proposed to by her neighbor, William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), who becomes obsessed with her after getting a cheeky Valentine’s card. Finally, while making the rounds on her farm, she locks eyes with the wandering Sergeant Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), and a slow look of “oh shit” crawls over her face as she realizes yet another suitor has latched onto her.

Far from the Madding Crowd is a remarkably calm movie. Even in scenes with a literal fire or where an entire flock of sheep kills themselves, the camera stays still, and the only music is period-setting violins. It’s an unexpressive film. The point seems to be to create that late 1800s English countryside atmosphere the book was about, and it’s nice, but it’s much easier to do with a movie than with a book and movies are capable of much more in general.

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